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After lights out Teppic lay in bed and thought about religion It was certainly a very complicated subject

The valley of the Djel had its own private gods, gods which had nothing to do with the world outside It had always been very proud of the fact The gods ise and just and regulated the lives of ht, there was no question about that, but there were some puzzles

For example, he knew his father made the sun come up and the river flood and so on That was basic, it hat the pharaohs had done ever since the tis like that The point was, though, did he just make the sun co the sun come up in the Valley seemed a etting any younger, but it was rather difficult to i up everywhere else and not the Valley, which led to the distressing thought that the sun would coot about it, which was a very likely state of affairs He'd never seen his father do anythingthe sun rise, he had to adrunt of effort round about the dawn His father never got up until after breakfast The sun caet to sleep The bed, whatever Chidder said, was too soft, the air was too cold and, worst of all, the sky outside the high as too dark At hoht from the necropolis, its silent flah the ancestors atching over their valley He didn't like the darkness

The following night in the dor the coast shyly tried to put the boy in the next bed inside a wickerwork cage he ht after that Snoxall, who had the bed by the door and came from a little country out in the forests soreen and asked for volunteers to have their intestines wound around a tree On Thursday a small war broke out between those orshipped the Mother Goddess in her aspect of the Moon and those orshipped her in her aspect of a huge fat woman with enormous buttocks After that the ion, while a fine thing, could be taken too far

Teppic had a suspicion that unpunctuality was unforgivable But surely Mericet would have to be at the tower ahead of hi by the direct route The old et there before hie in the alley firstHe e away before heup the wall, Teppic told hi a word of it

He ran along a roof ridge, senses alert for dislodged tiles or tripwires His iures

The gong tower loomed ahead of him He paused, and looked at it He had seen it a thousand tih it barely rated a 18, notwithstanding that the brass do climb It was just a familiar landmark That made it worse now; it bulked in front of hireyness of the sky

He advancedthe tower obliquely across the sloping roof It ca with Chiddy's and those of hundreds of other young assassins, and that they'd carry on being up there even if he died tonight It was sort of co his rope and made an easy throw on to the wide parapet that ran around the tower, just under the doht

Then he tugged it as hard as possible, bracing himself with one foot on a chimney stack

Abruptly, and with no sound, a section of parapet slid outwards and dropped

There was a crash as it hit the roof below and then slid down the tiles Another pause was punctuated by a distant thu barked

Stillness ruled the rooftops Where Teppic had been the breeze stirred the burning air

After several ed froe and terrible s the examiner could do could possibly be unfair An assassin's clients were invariably rich enough to pay for extre assassins of his own[5] Mericet wasn't trying to kill hi to make him kill himself

He sidled up to the base of the tower and found a drainpipe It hadn't been coated with slipall, rather to his surprise, but his gently questing fingers did find the poisoned needles painted black and glued to the inner face of the pipe He removed one with his tweezers and sniffed it

Distilled bloat Pretty expensive stuff, with an astonishing effect He took a slass phial from his belt and collected as loves and, with the speed of a sloth, started to climb

'Now it may well be that, as you travel across the city on your lawful occasions, you will find yourselves in opposition to fellow entle a bench And this is quite right and /what are you doing Mr Chidder no don 't tell me I'm sure I wouldn't want to know see me afterwards/ proper It is open to everyone to defend themselves as best theyyour steps and against whoht?'/

Mericet spun round from his blackboard like a vulture who has just heard a death-rattle and pointed the chalk at Cheesewright, who gulped

'Thieves' Guild, sir?' he ed

'Step out here, boy'

There hispered rumours in the dormitories about what Mericet had done to slovenly pupils in the past, which were always vague but horrifying The class relaxed Mericet usually concentrated on one victim at a time, so all they had to do noas look keen and enjoy the show Criot to his feet and trooped down the aisle between the desks

The htfully

'Well, now,' he said, 'and here we have Cheesewright, G, skulking across the quaking rooftops See the determined ears See the firm set of those knees'

The class tittered dutifully Cheesewright gave therin and rolled his eyes

'But what are these sinister figures that march in step with him, hey? /Since you find this so funny, Mr Teppic, perhaps you would be so good as to tell Mr Cheesewright?'/

Teppic froze in aze bored into hiht Even father's frightened of Dios